By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 7, 2006; A03
CHESTER, Pa. -- On Nov. 15, 2001, Irshad and Masood Shaikh found themselves standing under the darkest cloud imaginable: The brothers had become suspects in the worst bioterrorism attack in American history.
An FBI SWAT team battered down their front door, pointed semiautomatic rifles at Irshad's wife and carried out the first raid on a private home in the federal investigation of the anthrax attacks. Agents in moon suits carted out the Shaikhs' computers, medicines and books and swabbed the television set for anthrax spores.
But the FBI had acted on a bad tip. By every account available, agents found no evidence implicating the brothers, who are widely respected public health experts.
Since then, the Shaikhs have suffered consequences great and small. Irshad Shaikh, 44, who is Chester's health commissioner and has worked on humanitarian missions in Iraq and Afghanistan with U.S. officials, has been blocked by the FBI from obtaining a federal contract with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Immigration officials canceled his scheduled interview for U.S. citizenship. And whenever Irshad returns to the United States from abroad, federal agents escort him off the airplane and interrogate him for hours.
Masood Shaikh, 46, serves as the Chester city epidemiologist. Like Irshad, he obtained a medical degree in Pakistan and a master's degree and a doctorate in public health from Johns Hopkins University. Two years ago, Masood was selected to work on removing land mines from Iraq. But the federal government refused to extend Masood's work visa pending a "security clearance." The clearance never came through, and Masood could not leave the country.
Masood, once poised to apply for American citizenship, now faces the expiration of his work visa and a return to Pakistan after 15 years in the United States.
The brothers acknowledge that they cannot prove that the government is behind every one of these roadblocks, but they point to a pattern.
"Our whole life has been turned upside down since 9/11," Irshad said by telephone from Cairo, where he is working with the World Health Organization. "For God's sake, they are welcome to search my house anytime. I will give them the key."
No one could argue with the FBI's urgency in trying to find the anthrax killers. The mail attacks in September and October 2001 claimed five lives and left 17 people gravely ill. The assailant possessed one of the deadliest bioweapons, and, with the slightest tweak in delivery, the anthrax spores might have caused tens of thousands of deaths. As the years passed and the FBI turned its searchlight on half a dozen people, careers and lives have been shattered.
The FBI designated Steven J. Hatfill, a Washington infectious disease researcher, as "a person of interest," and Louisiana State University dismissed him in 2004. In August 2004, FBI teams searched the home of Kenneth Berry, a New York physician who held three patents related to bioterrorism. He has lost his job and now lives in New Jersey.
Neither Hatfill nor Berry has been charged with a crime. Both vehemently deny any involvement with the anthrax letters, and Hatfill has sued the Justice Department.
But few suspects so unequivocally lack any connection to anthrax research as do the Shaikh brothers. They have never done biowarfare research. Their attorney, former prosecutor Anthony F. List, describes a Kafkaesque maze in which federal officials argue that they cannot be expected to "clear" men who, officially, are accused of nothing.
Spokesmen for the FBI, the U.S. attorney's office and the Department of Homeland Security say they are prohibited by federal law from talking about anyone even tangentially connected to a criminal investigation.
"This office has made no allegations regarding the Shaikhs," said Richard Manieri, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. "The Justice Department . . . typically doesn't announce when an investigation is closed or comment on the status."
List says prosecutors gave him Web addresses for federal inspectors general, but that is an uncertain path, and appeals can take years. "My clients are committed public servants," List said. "They don't have years to get on with their lives."
The Shaikh brothers grew up in Islamabad, Pakistan, in what they described as a secular and upper-middle-class family -- nine of their cousins are doctors. They immigrated to the United States and attended Johns Hopkins; Irshad was a Fulbright scholar.
In Chester, a working-class city of 36,000 just south of Philadelphia on the Delaware River, many residents view the Shaikh brothers with something approaching reverence. Irshad has served as health commissioner since 1994. On holidays, the brothers would volunteer to run the animal-control truck, picking up dead dogs and deer.
"We are very lucky to be the beneficiaries of their talents," said Chester City Council member Monir Z. Ahmed. "They've had a thousand opportunities to hurt people right here in Chester, and all they do is help us."
Then came the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The anthrax mailings began a week later. When Irshad heard a knock at his office door Nov. 15 and found four federal agents waiting, he was not surprised, he recalls.
"Muslim? Pakistani? Unfortunately we have all these characteristics," Irshad said. "I understand that. We are not angry, we are not resentful. This was logical."
The FBI smashed through the door of his house and found Irshad's wife, a dentist, asleep in bed. They handcuffed her at gunpoint. Other agents burst into the downstairs office, which was rented by the AIDS Care Group of Chester.
"They handcuffed our carpenter," recalled physician Howell Strauss. "One agent asked about the white dust -- I explained it was from the Sheetrocking. Then they took away our Elmer's glue for testing. I told them, 'You've been surveilling this house for weeks, and this is what you do?' I'll never have the same faith in our government."
Half a year later, Irshad Shaikh took a job with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, running a mortality survey in Afghanistan. He worked closely with State Department officials. Later, the CDC asked Irshad to work in Atlanta and analyze the data, but the FBI insisted that he could not set foot in the federal offices, a ban that at least one senior CDC administrator protested, according to a federal official.
In June 2003, Irshad served as a leader with the Emergency Mine Action Survey in Iraq under the auspices of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. He was responsible for securing and removing ammunition stockpiles, working closely with Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus and Brig. Gen. Frank G. Helmick of the Army's 101st Airborne Division. Irshad proudly e-mailed a photo of himself in a Black Hawk helicopter. He's sitting shoulder to shoulder with Helmick.
When Irshad returned to the United States, agents escorted him off the airplane. "You know what the other passengers are thinking: 'Terrorist!' " Irshad said.
Irshad and his wife have decided it is wiser to stay overseas in Cairo with WHO until the matter blows over -- although, for the first time, he has started saying, " If this blows over . . ."
"I decided to live this difficult exile," he said. "I know we are collateral damage. But we know, we believe , that fairness will prevail in our adopted country."
He paused.
"I would like say, respectfully, please let us get on with our lives."
The phone clicked off. Masood, sitting in their attorney's office listening to the conversation, shrugged. Irshad is the family optimist. "I came to this country hoping I could work and have a good career," Masood said. "My brothers still has some hope. I'm losing mine."
